Shiver
by FawkesFyre
Summary: It was bracing, to see people from all houses and walks of life be so blazingly united in this one final goal, but it only made the final crushing defeat all the more devastating.


_author's note: don't waste your time. _

Harry shivered. It was all he ever seemed to do recently, the only motion he was capable of. A pathetic, weak shivering that rattled his bones and the chains that shackled him, a loathsome reflex that Harry hated with all his floundering soul. The shivering was as inescapable as the cold stone he sat upon, as the creeping darkness that filled his world, as the bleak knowledge that he was going to die here.

Here, in this dank, solitary hell. His cell, in the dungeons of Hogwarts. No longer was the school of witchcraft and wizardry a place of wonder, of escape, or safety. Its crumbling walls and remnants from the past strewn carelessly about were a constant reminder to the whole of the wizarding world that everything had changed, and was never going back. Harry let his heavy head fall back against the wall behind him in defeat, breathing the best he could, and gave in to the shivering once again.

oOoOoOo

Harry had watched as things fell to pieces the night the Death Eaters and their Lord had staged their attack. People's spirits were hopeful, which Harry had come to see as their ultimate downfall. Hope is intangible, unable to be relied on. What they needed was skill, numbers, something _real_ to defend Hogwarts from their inexorable advance. They had counted on hope for victory, sheer will, and it hadn't been enough.

Harry watched as one by one, the castle's defenses had been destroyed. Harry had watched as his comrades, his friends, family, people he had never met and now never would, fall around him. He watched as even Professor Snape fell victim to Voldemort's wrath. He watched as various staff members shouted orders, attempting to organize a counter attack out of chaos. The haze of battle was thick in the air around him, spells rending the sky again and again, rubble falling from the castle walls, screams of the dying and tortured issuing from countless victims. Hope had, however, remained until the very last desperate moment. It was bracing, to see people from all houses, all walks of life, to be so blazingly united in this one final goal, but it only made the final crushing defeat all the more devastating.

Harry had made his final stand; he'd played along with Voldemort's game and marched to the forest to face his death. His fate, he would discover, was destined to be far worse. Riddle was not satisfied with the simple spell it would take to end Harry's life; one _Avada Kedavra_ wasn't enough to contain the depth of hate and sadistic pleasure he demanded in ending the pillar of strength Harry represented. Harry had, instead, been enslaved under the Dark Lord's regime. Hogwarts, the last stand of wizarding society against the reign of terror the Dark Lord began, had fallen with Harry Potter that night into enslavement and fear.

Harry had become Voldemort's new pet, his puppet to be toyed with and tossed in a corner when the entertainment got stale. He was in his abandoned corner now, chained down with heavy shackles and dressed like a house elf, in a moment of jarring silence between his last torture session and the next. He judged the passing time by the nightly dinners he was forced to attend, the name just a façade for the agony the guests planned as their dinner entertainment.

Dinner, another thing he was deprived of. He'd been a little hungry while living with his aunt and uncle, but that was nothing like the searing pain in his abdomen now, nowhere near as bad as the hunger now. His battered, emaciated body was proof of that. He'd also had over his fair share of trips to Madame Pomfrey, but now, in the Dark Lord's reign, his skin was more bruised than not, and blood was crusted over it in any case. His hollow eyes stared glassily out into the dark, toothpick limbs shaking, dreading the next time a death eater would come for him.

_author's note: I had high hopes for this one, but I suppose you know what maudlin thoughts I have about hope right now. _


End file.
